A/76/178 23. While mixing and fusion are constant, purity claims are aberrational, reflecting fantasy rather than reality. Purity and authenticity-based approaches to culture and to relations between (and within) diverse cultures often fail to reflect the complexity of human experience and undermine the reality of cultural heterogeneity with a range of negative consequences for human rights. The insistence on cultural purity can lead to the decimation of those deemed to taint that purity, to violence and obliteration of individuals and groups. Processes of cultural cleansing and cultural engineering have been carried out by an array of nationalist Governments, fundamentalists and extremists, and others aiming to defend such claimed “purity” and eradicate evidence that challenges it (A/71/317, paras. 36–37). 24. Cultural purity is sometimes ascribed to particular groups, especially marginalized groups, even for positive motives. Such approaches may unintentionally purvey stereotypes about such persons and represent them as trapped in the past. Many actors may attempt to police assumed cultural borders they have themselves erected in their imaginations, such as by telling those in their own group who convert to a different religious tradition that they may not simultaneously engage in traditional practices or visit traditional cultural or religious sites. Governments may only or primarily finance cultural projects carried out by members of some ethnic groups or those that are seen to be ethnically based rather than multi-ethnic or intercultural, or promote certain identities and cultural heritages, or “ethnicization,” through cultural policies and programming. 25. Disciplines such as art history and cultural studies, and advocacy by cultural rights defenders, have long grappled with the issues in the present report. 25 However, those debates have been insufficiently reflected in the field of human rights and in the United Nations system, which sometimes have purveyed generalizations about identity and culture, even with good intentions. 26 Cultural rights discourse and human rights approaches to cultural questions should not assume reified identities or lose the pluralistic sense of being. 26. In recent years, trends in official and popular discourses have sometimes been away from recognizing cultural mixing and mixed cultural id entities. In some contexts, any kind of cultural diversity or plurality has been denied, and visions of a claimed homogenous society have been imposed (A/HRC/43/50/Add.1, paras. 27, 35, 43, 89 and 96 (f)). Minority cultural expressions (and those of minorities within minorities) may be repressed, marginalized or unfunded. 27 “Ethnic and religious minorities may also suffer from prohibitions such as using a language or artistic style specific to a region or a people” (A/HRC/23/34, para. 43). Mixed people may be erased. 27. One expert described a “passionate desire for homogeneity” at the governmental level. A recent example of this was a 2020 statement by the Deputy Prime Minister of Japan, Taro Aso, that Japan has only one ethnic group and language. 28 In February 2018, the Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, stated before elected officials that “we do not want our colour … to be mixed in with others”, a statement denounced by the former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. 29 Steve Bannon, an advisor to former President of the United States of America, Donald Trump, advocated the fictional idea of the United States having one national cult ure, a __________________ 25 26 27 28 29 8/22 See, e.g., Stuart Hall, “The Question of Cultural Identity,” in Modernity and its Futures: Understanding Modern Societies, Book IV (Stuart Hall et al, eds., Polity, 1992). See www.ids.ac.uk/opinions/stop-homogenising-us-mixing-and-matching-faith-and-beliefs-inindia-and-beyond/. Freemuse submission. Samuel Osbourne, “Japan’s deputy PM says country only has ‘one ethnic group’”, Independent, 14 January 2020. Available at www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/japan-deputy-pm-oneethnic-group-race-ainu-taro-aso-a9283116.html. See www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=22765&LangID=E . 21-10019